The End of the Road at the Start of the Path
by tdinttwrt
Summary: The Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler search for a way to cheat death, and forge a new path forward.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

Rose tossed and turned. Something was off, and it wasn't simply that today had not turned out well. That happened to them all the time. No, what was different was the Doctor.

He had barely looked at her, when they finally made it back to the Tardis. He had excused himself from joining her at dinner, and she had not seen him until he startled her, right outside her bedroom door, as she was turning in. It was like he came out of nowhere, and for a moment she thought he meant to come in with her, talk about what was bothering him, make love. But he had only asked, tersely, "Time for sleep?" When she answered, "Yeah," he had nodded and walked off.

She had spent the next two hours trying not to wonder what she should have said, instead, and now she was giving up. She got out of bed, and went to look for him. Clearly she wouldn't be able to relax until they had resolved whatever was wrong.

The Doctor was still up, of course. He was always awake. She found him in the library, sitting on the battered red velvet settee he favored, his reading glasses perched on his nose. Bent over the large, heavy book in his lap, he seemed not to notice her there at the door.

The Tardis had set a crackling fire in the massive marble hearth, and the flames made shadows dance over the walls of endless volumes, which stretched into darkness in this cavernous space. She'd likened it to a medieval castle, or a fortress, a fortress made of books. Big toys for big boys. He'd assured her the Tardis was not infinite inside, but sometimes she wondered.

The Doctor stretched his legs out, bringing them up to rest upon a low hassock. Crossing one ankle over the other, he stretched his feet in the direction of the fire. His feet were perpetually cold. Rose saw he was wearing his slippers. At least he had shucked his trainers. This was as close to casual wear as he seemed able to manage: slippers. Well, if you didn't count "naked" as "casual." If you did, then she'd seen him going "casual" quite a lot the past few weeks. Come to think of it, her favorite casual outfit of his was definitely just a tie, preferably the blue silk, the one with the swirls of blue-er flowers, and nothing else…

The Doctor's voice cut through her reverie. "Thought you'd gone to bed."

Rose fidgeted with the hem of her jimjam top. She felt suddenly like she had been called to the Headmaster's office, like she was back in Primary school and in trouble, again. "I couldn't sleep."

"No," he replied, "after your performance today, I imagine not." He flicked over another page, still not looking up.

Her hair was up in a bedtime ponytail, and now anyone who could be bothered to look would have seen the tops of her ears flushing a vivid purplish-red, a sure sign she was getting angry. "Exactly what do you mean, by that?" she asked.

"Oh, I think you know."

She strode into the room, and moved in front of him, right where she would block his light. He'd have to look now. He did, blinking up at her, and she let loose.

"Are you-you can't possibly be-accusing _me_ of having cocked it up today? 'Cause if that's the case, something's wrong with my memory. 'Cause I don't remember landing the Tardis on an orbiting military platform instead of the pleasant afternoon of shopping I was promised. And I don't remember disappearing for the better part of an hour, leaving myself in nothing but a thin sundress and a pair of flip-flops, to deal with a troop of panicking soldiers, whilst the station lost power and filled with smoke and started hurtling into their moon. The way I remember it," her voice had been rising steadily in volume, and was at its peak now, "that was all you, mate!"

The Doctor slammed his book shut, and glared at her. She didn't find him so sexy in his glasses, now, she noticed. "Since when do you not recognize a self-destruct countdown, when you see one?" he hissed.

"OK, so where are you going with this? Insinuating I don't care enough? That I don't try hard enough? What?"

"A man, Rose, a living, breathing, ordinary man is dead who shouldn't be."

Rose was trembling now, with anger. "I did my best," she tried calmly. "My level best. Maybe you think you'd have done better, but you weren't there, you left me on my own, again, and I won't let you make this my fault. And," she was winding up now for a real row, she could feel it coming. "And how many people have you stood by and let die, Doctor? A handful here, a couple dozen there? Adds up, after a while, doesn't it? So how many? Hundreds? Thousands?" Her eyes narrowed. "How 'bout billions?" The moment she spat that last word, she wanted to take it back. But it was said, that thing he guarded so deeply that it had been like a sacrament when he let her see any of it in his mind, and not until just last week. What he blamed himself for.

He looked away from her, stared into the fireplace, jaw clenched. With quiet intensity, one word at a time, he said, "You weren't paying attention, and I trusted you to handle it, and he died."

"And why is this one man so different?" Rose demanded. "Out of all the times you've stood by and played one life off against another, why're you flogging this - one - death?"

"Because some of you are meant to die, Rose. You-some of you, are meant to die. And some of you aren't."

Rose scoffed. "And you think you always know which is which, do you?"

"Yes, I do." He looked at her again, but his stare went through her and out the other side, and kept going. She knew he wasn't seeing _her_ , but time. Time, holding her like a gnat trapped in amber. Yes, in this scenario, she was most definitely the bug.

He went on. "Three months ago, you would have been aware of your surroundings. You would have seen that panel counting down, and noticed the bolts were charged. And you would have _thought_ about what you were doing."

"'Three months ago,'" Rose repeated, half to herself. She suddenly realized what he was getting at. "You mean, I wouldn't have made that mistake before we started sleeping together? Is that what this is? Oh that's lovely, Doctor, you really are a born romantic, you are." Rose's fists had clenched to her sides, frustrated tears threatening to spill from her eyes.

The Doctor had taken off his glasses, and was pinching the bridge of his nose, pressing into the inner corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. He looked as if he were about to say something.

Rose cut him off. She wasn't done. "So now the shine's off the apple, you've had your fun, but here comes all that Time Lord guilt, am I right? The indispensable Doctor, wasting time rutting on top a lower life form and-"

He'd opened his mouth to protest, but she wouldn't have it. She wanted this out on the table.

"And today, this is just what you've been waitin' for, isn't it? A reason to put me out the door, with a great excuse to say, 'It's for your own good, Rose,'" she mocked. "That's what this is, isn't it?" Her voice hitched.

She couldn't be this close to him. She backed away, towards the fireplace, turned her back. The thick, hot tears were coming for real, now. Head bent, she watched them drip one at a time, down onto the ornate Turkish carpet which covered a good bit of the library's expansive floor. Watched them drip, hit, and soak into the deep wool pile. She struggled for composure. "You're finishing with me." It wasn't a question.

The Doctor had got up at some point during her rant, and now he was crowding her, trying to clasp at her shoulders. "That's nonsense, I'm doing nothing of the sort," he was saying.

She angrily dodged away from him, wiped clumsily at her eyes with the back of her hands, commanding herself to stop bawling like a weak child and face him full-on.

He stood, hands dangling helplessly at his sides. "You know how I feel. You've been inside my head, not twenty-four hours ago." Was he blushing? She thought he was. "Honestly, Rose," he went on, "how could you possibly think my feelings for you could ever change so fast?" He did look bewildered. Horrified, even. Rose felt her heart rate start to come down.

"Well, what am I supposed to think?" Rose answered. "You just implied I'm no use to you anymore, and from that I take it you regret counting on me, regret asking me to travel with you, regret...everything." She felt like she was regaining some emotional control. Thank goodness, at least the tears had stopped. "I suppose you do love me," she admitted. "But it's not enough, is it? It's not nearly enough."

Without a word, the Doctor drew back one of his slippered feet and kicked, as hard as he could, the side of his own shin. "Ow."

Rose gaped. "Did you just kick yourself?"

"Yes, I did. And I deserve another." And he switched sides and repeated the motion. "Again, ow."

"Stop doing that." She wasn't in the mood for his clowning. They had a history of him joking his way out of important conversations. Not this time.

The Doctor drew in a breath and grabbed the back of his head, elbows out. The unconscious gesture of a soldier surrendering. "You're right. Love alone isn't enough."

Rose's face fell.

He held out his hands, stopping her, asking her to stop. "No, please, don't draw any more conclusions. You've got me all wrong. First off, sod that bloke today, he was a right tosser. Won't be missed, and believe me, I know that, too."

"So why are you angry?"

"I'm not angry, I'm bloody terrified. Because, but for that man throwing you out of the way, and getting into what you both assumed was an escape pod, and leaving you on the platform, you would have been the one inside it when it exploded. You would have been the collection of vaporized molecules and atoms spewing into space. You, Rose. But for the selfish, evil behavior of a bad man, you would have died today."

He went back to the settee and threw himself down upon it, collapsing against the tufted upholstery. He let his head loll back, staring toward the room's vaulted ceiling, shrouded in shadow far overhead. Sounding exhausted, he asked, "Can't you see how distracted we've become? We're not on top of our game, love. Neither of us."

Rose, if pressed, would have had to admit he was right. There had been mistakes, and, in a way, a lot less fun to their "adventures," these past weeks. It wasn't just the new relationship between them, though. Rose thought she knew what it really was, what the Doctor wasn't saying.

"On my own behalf," he was going on, "I wouldn't necessarily care if I'm suddenly bollocks. But it's going to get you killed. Sooner rather than later. And yes, I feel horribly guilty about that." He raised his head and finally said what was really bothering him: "It was me, set that countdown," he confessed. "I meant to drive the Spectorac into that pod, get them off the station, blow them to smithereens. And instead, I nearly killed _you_."

Rose allowed a minute or two of silence to pass, feeling it wise to let the hurtful words and glares fade before she spoke again. The Doctor picked up his book, only thumbing through pages halfheartedly, clearly too upset to read. Rose studied him. He looked thinner, paler, than she remembered. His layers of clothing seemed overly-large. He looked tired. Rose's heart clenched. She knew what needed to be addressed, now. The devil himself had said she would die, "so very soon in battle." She had believed the Doctor when he brushed it off as untrue, lies meant to get a rise out of her, to put them off-balance. He had assured her he'd looked into her timelines and seen nothing of the sort. Now, she wasn't so sure who had been lying, the demon, or the Doctor. That prediction had come three months ago, more or less. It was right after that scrape they had become lovers. She suddenly felt foolish.

She went to the Doctor and sat down beside him. "So what are we going to do about it?" she asked, softly. "This impending death of mine?"

The Doctor didn't answer her. He kept pretending to be looking for something in that damn book. Rose peered over his shoulder, into it. The text was all orbs and angles, dots and connecting whorls.

"Is that Gallifreyan?" she asked.

"Yes."

"The Tardis still won't translate it for me. Thought she might, after we started, you know…"

"No." He folded the book shut, set it aside.

"Would she translate for me, if you told her to?"

"Yes." He shifted, turning toward her, folding one leg up on the settee.

"But you won't, will you?"

"What is it, in Gallifreyan, that you want to know, Rose?"

Her answer came spontaneously: "Why you have to hate yourself for being in love." He blinked, rapidly. So, she was onto something. She pressed forward. "Is it a rule, for Time Lords, written up in some book I'm not allowed to see? Maybe the one you were just looking at?"

The Doctor's eyes darted away, he was hiding again, and Rose wouldn't have it. She wanted him closer. She lifted her hands, splayed her fingertips over his temples, her skin warm, his cool, his heartbeats faintly translating to her. She could taste it now, a hint of the increasingly-familiar psychic flavor of him, blue and dark and sweet and deep, hovering at the edges of her own sense of self, calling her in.

"Or," she breathed, "are all your rules just here, inside this head of yours?" She moved toward him, physically and mentally, farther toward that indigo pool she would drown in, gladly, over and over again.

"Don't," he said. He brought his hands up and pulled her wrists down, away. "Not...not now." He scooted away from her.

This was ridiculous, it was like she was chasing him across the sofa.

Suddenly, he asked, "Why are you with me?"

Rose checked his tone for sarcasm, or anger, but there was none. This wasn't some lover's game. He meant it literally. He was looking bewildered again, too. Positively befuddled. "I think I should be the one asking that question," she said. "What the hell do you see in me?"

"That's simple. I love you. You're wonderful. But if I'm going to try and keep you, I have to know what it is you want. From me, from us, from this life in the Tardis. New experiences? Exotic travel?" His voice grew bitter. "That sick rush of adrenaline when I've placed your life in danger?"

When she didn't answer immediately, he added, "Wildly vocal, zero-gravity sex?" That put a tiny twinkle back in his eye, and almost got a smile out of her. He really was rather spectacular, and inventive. But she reminded herself she was annoyed.

So she asked him, "Are you really this thick?"

He raised one eyebrow.

"I want _you_ , you daft alien. That's it. Just you. That's why I want a look into your books, and your head, as much as you'll let me, why I want your body skin to skin with mine, any time you'll let me, why I follow you into danger, why I trust you with my life. It's also why I forgive you when you've hurt me, like you've done tonight-"

"You hurt me, too, Rose. Tonight. That remark, about people dying, that was cruel."

She could see it had caused him pain. And perhaps what she had said, deliberately, out of anger, had been worse than what originally angered her. "I'm so sorry. I can be cruel, and that's one thing you never are. You couldn't be, could you." The tears were threatening once more. "I'm sorry-"

He slid across the short distance between them, and silenced her with a kiss. He pulled her to him, and covered her face with more kisses. "I forgive you," he murmured. "I'll always forgive you, forgive you anything." He kissed her mouth again, then asked with his tongue for her to open to him, and when she responded plunged in, thrusting his tongue against hers, over and over again, as if he couldn't get his fill.

Rose wanted to link with him, longed for it. She reached up, hopefully, towards his brow, but he caught her wrists again, and for the second time denied her what she craved. She wanted that connection so badly that the longing was nearly unbearable. When had she grown so needy of it? Of him? The intensity frightened her.

He buried his face in her neck, his cool breath coming in pants. After a moment, he explained hoarsely, against her ear, "We can't...I can't go on like this."

She pulled back, forcing him reluctantly to release her. He rushed to say more, seeing the hurt on her face again, no doubt. "I don't mean forever, I'm not putting you off the ship, I swear. It's just, I can't do this, I can't be intimate with you, and then carry on as usual. It's not working." He motioned back and forth between them. "This. Us. In the Tardis. I need to sort it. And I don't believe I can be intimate with you again, until I do. Sort it. For good."

Before Rose could say a word, he was up and already at the door. He paused, and said, "I'm going to figure this out, Rose. I'm going to make it right, I swear I will. And then we'll uh...yes..."

And then he was gone, and Rose was left upon the settee, with swollen lips, and tear-streaked cheeks, and nothing resolved at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two: Reading Gallifreyan**

Rose needed sleep. No matter how unsettled she still felt, there was nothing more she could do about her and the Doctor tonight. He had sounded firm, and a little manic when he left her. That was worrisome, that last part. Manic often meant rash behavior was coming. But there was no point in going after him, tonight, to try and talk him down. Was there?

She yawned. The warmth and orange-yellow light of the fire made the library cozy, in spite of its vastness. The plush velvet settee was deep and long, the arms perfectly angled for reclining. Suddenly Rose felt her own room was impossibly far away; she didn't want to go back there. A fluffy lap-rug was draped conveniently over the back of the settee. She pulled it down, tucked it around her feet. She plumped up the throw-cushions at her head's end, and lay down. Yes, this will do nicely, no reason to move. She gazed into the flames crackling away softly in the fireplace, and saw her bedroom in her mind's eye: dark, cheerless, lonely. The truth was, she felt closer to the Doctor here, could sense the impression of his voice still ringing about in the library's vault overhead. She imagined she felt the impression of his body in the upholstery, under her ribs. She never wanted to sleep in her own room, without him, again.

She knew she was pitifully love-sick. After her first disastrous boyfriend, that Jimmy Stone arsehole, she'd sworn she'd never get wrapped around a man that way again. Yet here she was, love-sick and off-center. She was only barely holding herself back from hunting the Doctor down, right now, and to do what? Wheedle him for sex, or a cuddle. Something, anything. Beg for it. Pitiful.

She yawned a second time, longer and wider. Her gaze fell from the fire to the Doctor's Gallifreyan book on the carpet, the one he didn't want her to read. And why not, exactly? She reached down and hauled it up beside her. It was bound in thick, bumpy leather, but still felt buttery-soft to the touch.  
She got up on an elbow and opened to a random page. A scent came up from the paper like a green woods in the heat of summer. Not what you would expect an old book to smell like-no mustiness at all. The Gallifreyan writing was all whorls and circles, intersecting curlicues. She traced a few of the shapes with her finger.

It occurred to her that his language was like him: swirling, hard to take in at once. And never, ever straightforward. She wished, deeply, to be able to read it. In spite of their lovemaking and the slight telepathic connections he had allowed (and only on a handful of occasions), she was certain she had merely knocked at his surface. There had to be more he was holding onto, hiding out of reach. She wanted at it. The Doctor's first language, Gallifreyan was what he learned to think in, and maybe he dreamed in it, still. Eskimos have dozens of words for "snow," while the English only a handful. Meaning, your language is your world, in a way. She was certain if she could read his language, she might get a better idea of how his mind worked.

She turned to the next pages of tangled, circular text. The book's paper was thick, fine-grained, obviously hand-laid. Rose had watched men make books by hand when her first Doctor took her for a tour of Renaissance Florence; one of his compulsory educational excursions. He had loved to educate her, that one. Now when she looked at old books she noticed things she wouldn't have before. The edges of the book were hand-cut, and gilded in what was most likely real silver. She looked at the binding, and saw how the pages were nested, and hand-sewn to the leather cover.

She wanted to know, why had he chosen this book to read, tonight? He had certainly been brooding when he fetched it off his shelves. Had she guessed right? Could it actually a book of rules for Time Lords in love? She knew it was silly, on some level, to think such a thing existed, but she was having trouble clearing her head of him tonight and assumed he was experiencing the same obsession with her. With their relationship. So surely he must have been reading something related to the topic of romance, or at least sexuality.

Rose put her head back down on the cushions. Her eyes were now even with the still-opened pages of the book. From this angle the figures appeared more like a work of art, than text. Maybe, she thought dreamily, it was something really nice. Something like...Gallifreyan love poetry...

She was drifiting now, and her eyelids had almost fluttered closed for the night when a slight but certain movement on the left-hand page reignited her attention. Her eyes opened wide. One of the circles, it was rotating, ever so slowly. "Cor, blimey!" She flew up onto her elbow again.

The Gallifreyan script began crawling about itself. Rearranging, unknotting. Circles straightened into lines, dots merged with other dot, indented bow-tie shapes floated around and broke into pieces. In another moment, the text was sorted into neat ranks and files. Had the Doctor changed his mind, about letting her read Gallifreyan?

Rose eagerly set to reading; she was immediately confused. These were mostly Greek letters, she was sure of that. That big symbol, the one straddling three lines, that was an Epsilon. And she she knew these triangles were called Deltas. A Mu here, and that was Theta. Why would the Tardis translate Gallifreyan to Greek? There were a few Roman letters, mostly "P" and "A," though no words. And this, this was an equals sign, but with a slash through it. She knew that, it was "does not equal."

"You've got to be joking," she said.

She turned the next page, and then the next, and the next, and then flipped through to the end in bunches, only to start at the beginning and go through to the back again. The book was unreadable. Except the title page, it was all mathematics.

"Maths," she said. "He reads bloody maths." There weren't even any numbers! A few ones, but on the whole nothing at all like anything she'd ever been taught. No, this was the sort of maths people like Stephen Hawking did, or those blokes everyone was afraid were going to make a black hole, over in Switzerland, with that collider thing.

She snapped the book shut with a huff, and shoved it off the settee, letting it fall to the floor with a thud. She was frustrated and disgusted, with the book and herself and the whole situation. She took it out on the cushions, punching and pinching them into submission. She yanked the throw back over her legs with her toes, from where it had slipped a little. She lay down, and closed her eyes. She was done with this nonsense for tonight.

As sleep came, her conscious mind began to sink down and mix with that sub-clime upon which it floats. This is the place where the Doctor's mind came to mingle with hers, when he allowed it. But then, as she drifted, here came bubbling up a touch of indigo, fresh and recent, and a lingering scent of cinnamon. He'd been here! Inside her mind, just now. It was him, showing her the Gallifreyan text, translating for her, she was certain. And then, he had laughed. He had laughed at her!

She was not amused. She was too tired to do anything about it now, but tomorrow? Just wait. She'd show him what was funny, and what wasn't.

***

 _"Mechanics of Time Decay in Semi-Elastic Space"_ had been most helpful, indeed. The Doctor was certain he was on the right track, though he might be a wee bit in over the tops of his wellies. Tinkering with time decay simply wasn't his area of expertise. He was much more of a thermodynamics guy, extremal black holes and microscopic entropy and the like. He had always favored the creative end of physics. There was no art, no whimsy to this stuff. Celestin's calculations were precise and arduous and so almost wholly unsuited to the Doctor's mind. To delve more deeply into these theories required a more bounded, disciplined intellect. Truth was, the Doctor could really use the help of Celestin himself. It would make things so much easier. Why not go fetch him?

Honore Celestin had been a singularity: a non-Gallifreyan, off-world theoretician of time travel. He had, in the early days, put forth theories which helped make Rassilon and Omega's dreams of an empire built upon time travel possible. The story of how a Homo sapiens cogitationes from a French-speaking backwater colony had come to be the darling of the first Academy, that story was always murky. Nothing was ever put down about the man's personal life, or where he disappeared to after publishing his first and only book.

During his stint as President of the High Council, he'd seen for himself what became of Honore Celestin, when he connected to the Matrix and saw all of the Time Lords' dirty secrets in one go. Honore Celestin had been rewarded by Rassilon in typical fashion. That is to say, Rassilon and his cronies denounced, discredited then exiled the mathematician to some random backwater of time, and proceeded to pretend the man had never existed.

The Doctor had seen Rassilon's fears as well as Celestin's fate in the Matrix. Rassilon did not care for Celestin's new line of inquiry: predicting long-term effects of pinpointing time travel coordinates on space-time. So the first President he had arranged for Celestin's career to come to an untimely end.

Centuries later, after enough Presidents had come and gone and meddling in time across the multiverse as a way of life well-established, no one could remember why studying Celestin had been banned. Academy professors and upper level students were granted access to his original works, and notes. He always managed to be a bit controversial of a figure, though, by the mere fact of his being non-Gallifreyan. His status as an off-worlder had, the argument went, allowed him to penetrate assumptions Gallifreyan physicists had never thought to question. He didn't have innate time-senses, his inner world was different, so he saw things they could not. Thus Honore Celestin was ever the poster-child for the various "open Gallifrey" reform movements the liberal colleges were forever trying to push. Not that they ever came to any good.

The Doctor was set on the idea: he'd find Celestin, wherever he had been exiled to, and pay him a visit. He'd tell him how right and important his work turned out to be. Apologize. Then he'd ask for his help. And should Celestin have any concerns about the effects of tinkering with the fabric of space-time, how much more harm could be done? Gallifrey and the Time Lords were so far past the point of harm the Doctor felt free to not only tinker away with time, but wrestle, bash and bend it if he pleased. Honestly, he did not have to have Celestin's help, but it would make things so much nicer. It would mean the achieving of a level of precision, of subtlety, maybe even a bit of panache, within the calculations. It would minimize the collateral damage. Surely, the mathematician would like to assist with that aspect.

The Doctor scrolled through the archived causality lines the Tardis kept in her memory, looking for the time around the start of Rassilon's reign. Celestin would have a distinct signature-someone so central to Gallifreyan history was sure to leave a wake. Bango, there he was. It was easy to track him down, for there: Indian Ocean, Earth, 1812. The Doctor zoomed in for a preview, to see exactly what the man's situation was. A real-time view swam up on his monitor, a view of a lush, green paradise fringed with coral sands and calm, aqua waters.

He smacked his palm down on the console and said, "Oh, Rose, you're going to have to pack that itsy-bitsy bikini of yours, because do I have a beach for you!" He set the coordinates and started on their way.

Rose. She had still been quite upset when he left her, alone in the library. But, dammit, it wasn't safe for them to take this any farther, not yet. Rose had no inkling of the myriad of hideous happenstances, the monsters she couldn't possibly imagine, all waiting to sniff out the Last of the Time Lords and use him and his technology to no good end. And if she wasn't fully with him, he couldn't fully shield her, and he needed a safe harbor to even figure out if that was possible. And, if it was, their full bonding was merely the first level of the protection he intended to weave around the two of them.

He'd already let it get too far. How stupid was he, to think he could give her physical affection and pleasure, and never start bonding with her for real? They'd already got to the point where they ached, mentally, physically. He could manage, but Rose was obviously becoming more and more irrational. He was worried for her and feeling guilty again. He reached out, down his link with the Tardis, to take a quick peek in on her. He could see her, in his mind's eye, curled up in the library, right where he'd left her. She had a book by her, his book.

All she wanted was to connect with him. It's what he wanted too, so how could he fault her for it? He decided he'd offer her an olive book in her hands, there was no harm in her reading it-she'd never understand it, anyway. But if he told the Tardis to go ahead and translate it for her, she'd know he meant what he said: he wasn't shutting her out, permanently. Quite the contrary.

He opened the hatch in the upper grating and jumped down. The level around the the base of the time rotor was home to most of the maintenance panels. Coding interfaces were here, and yes, the optical system, with its inputs via eye-movements was a quick way to make changes to code on the fly. He opened the optical interface panel and device rather like a two-barreled microscope popped out. He put his eyes to it, and began flying through the visual representation of his ship's files. He located the language translator matrices, and the great, glowing walls of additional security he'd set around Gallifreyan rose up near their center, like its own citadel. He entered, and searched out the modules on systems of mathematics.

He wasn't going to release everything to Rose's view, mind you. Some things he never could, not to anyone or anything, ever. The esoteric set theory which passed for a religion with the Sisters of Karn, for example. That would always have to be kept under lock and key. As would the incantations of the Logopolonians, said to stabilize the very fabric of the universe through the act of calculating its primary structures, over and over again. But the stuff Rose had in her hands? Harmless.

He found the code he needed to alter. With deft flicking of his irises, he moved a few symbols, drew a few lines, and it was done. The ship should start translating that book for Rose, now. He closed the panel, climbed back up top.

He moved back to her, through the Tardis' imaging systems and the broad telepathic field he shared with his ship. Someday, probably very soon, Rose was going to find out about this snooping of his. He would have to admit to her he'd been doing it since her first night on board. For her own good, of course. He hoped she wouldn't be too angry with him.

Here she was, still awake, though barely, eyelids fluttering, yellow hair spilled across the velvet cushions. He watched her see it-the matrix was rebooting. She was wide awake now.

The Doctor turned his attention to the book itself, watching it reconfigure into Humanian-standard notation. It suddenly occurred to him how useful it might be to study Celestin's theory in its original. There could be cultural nuances the Gallifreyan translation had obscured. Without Rose's sweet, stubborn insistence on seeing into this book tonight, he'd never have thought of that. She did that for him, didn't she, his Rose, made him see things fresh. He treasured that in her.

He never intended to snoop on Rose's feelings, but humans were so very emotional, and the intimacy he had allowed had already mucked about so badly with their natural barriers that when Rose was in any way agitated, her emotions broadcast to him like air raid sirens. That's what was happening, now. She was emoting, loud and clear, and to his dismay it wasn't the feeling of comfort, reassurance, he'd intended. No, rather she was crestfallen, let down, disappointed, disgusted, even. With the book, and with him.

He was confused. He'd given her what she'd asked for! Why was she upset? The woman made no sense!

He just had to see what the devil she was thinking. It wasn't right, but he was only revisiting places he'd already been, and it was ridiculously easy to slip into her uppermost levels of cognition-it was almost like that layer had given him permanent berth, had already reshaped itself to match him. So he didn't have to look far, to see what she was thinking.

Rose had never suspected his book was scientific. She had been hoping for something romantic. He caught the last words she'd been thinking: Gallifreyan love poetry.

The incongruity made him lose his focus, pulling him back into where he stood at his console. He barked out with laughter. Gallifreyan love poetry! Really? As if there had ever been such a thing! The idea was hilarious! Poor Rose, sincere, dearest Rose, so very human and doomed to be in love with him. Expecting romance, and getting _"Mechanics of Time Decay"_ instead.

He sent his mind back to her. He realized even though he'd pulled away, when he was laughing, the cognitive and emotional link hadn't fully severed. He'd have to be careful, lest she suss him out. He really shouldn't be doing this. But he saw her poor little bottom lip thrust out, pouting, that luscious bottom lip of hers, all plump and pink and wet. He thought of Gallifreyan love poetry again, and burst out laughing once more, unable to help himself. This time the laughter was not into the air of the console room. It was all mental, and loud, and straight down their connection.

Oh-oh. Chances were good she heard that. She showed no immediate reaction, but it had to had to have registered with her, somewhere. He could only hope the impression wasn't strong enough to swim into her consciousness. She'd find out about his "looking in" on her these past years, soon enough, and he was fine with that, ready to take the consequences, he was. But right now? That would be terrible timing. She was paranoid enough already. Though of course, that mental state was his fault, not hers.

The Doctor forced himself to leave her and return fully to his control room. It was time to focus back on the task at hand, time to set the Tardis flying to 19th century Earth, the Seychelles, untouched islands scattered like a handful of jewels off the west coast of Africa.

He'd meet with Celestin, and Rose would have a few days to sun and lounge and swim while he worked, on the loveliest beach she'd likely ever see, and she would forgive him for reading maths instead of love poems. She would forgive him everything, and when their holiday was done it would be time to see about that full bonding. And then, if that were possible, he could indeed show her all of time and space, but protected this time. Defended.

He wouldn't get her hopes up. He'd be fine with the slow path if it was with her, so they'd start there and if there couldn't be more, then so be it. But there was a chance they could keep traveling, a chance he'd work toward, for her sake and his. He'd keep that to himself though, until he was sure of it. But really, he had a feeling that everything was going to work out just fine.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three: Down the Rabbit Hole**

When the Doctor came looking for Rose in the library with a cuppa and important news at the crack of synthetic dawn, she was not on the sofa. He sighed. If she had crawled back into her own bed, she'd be there forever. He knew he should let her sleep, but this was important-he decided he'd wake her up and tell her, and then she could go back to bed if she wanted.

Rose's room was always dark, not a ray of light or a virtual window, not even a night light, because that was the way she said she wanted it. Good thing he had Gallifreyan superior night vision, and the dim light from the door he'd left open to the hallway shed a few beams across the floor. Rose's bedroom was an obstacle course of piles of laundry she never got around to finishing completely, stacks of books she borrowed from the library and never put back, a circle of plates and tea mugs around where she liked to sit on the floor, along with a slew of sketch books and pots of ink, pens, charcoal pencils. This is why, when they spent the night together, he preferred her in his room.

The thought, of Rose in his bed, as he approached her sleeping in hers, soft and vulnerable, always so open to him, he had to stomp hard on a sexual response that came roaring up out of nowhere. He was like a petrol-soaked stack of dry wood, these days-throw the tiniest spark, and you'd have a conflagration. Well, that's why he had this news. That's why he had made a decision.

"Rose," he called to her, low and soft. He sat beside her on the edge of her bed, one knee bent up on the mattress, the other foot on the floor. He leaned in and touched the tip of her nose, lightly. "Rose," he called again, a bit more impatiently this time.

Rose's hand flew to her nose, rubbing at it in sleepy irritation. Eyes still closed, she mumbled, "How long you gonna keep lookin' for frogs?" Then her face went lax, her mouth fell open, and she began a soft, small snoring at the back of her throat.

The Doctor laughed, gleefully. Humans and their hypnopompia. It was him laughing that woke her up.

Rose opened her eyes, rolled to her back and got up on her elbows. She squinted at him balefully, probably because he'd left her door open and the light was bothering her.

"Still laughin' at me?"

"Hmm?"

She fell back down onto the bed with a huff. "Your wee joke, earlier. Come to apologize?"

He reached out to stroke the back of her hand. To his dismay, she withdrew it from him, placed it on her stomach. She sat up fully against the headboard, and drew her duvet up around her, under her armpits. The body language was clear: back off.

That hurt, it truly did. Almost enough to erase the lingering mirth he felt about her expecting Gallifreyan love poetry out of him. He almost giggled, again. The way she was looking at him, right now, that would not be a good idea-giggling. He focused on her distance, and the hurtfulness of that. He had to put that right, yes he did.

"I've news," he announced.

"Tardis on fire?" she countered.

"What? No, no, of course not."

"Then why are you waking me up?"

"Oh, sorry, you can go right back to sleep if you like, but I thought you should know. We'll not be traveling, for a while. Perhaps not at all, not like we have been. I'm going to settle down with you, Rose, and keep you safe, and I need to see about fully bonding with you, if that's going to be possible or not, because if it is, we'll do that, asap. We've got a pit stop, got to see a man about some equations, but then we're off. I can let you choose the planet, and time. Maybe you'd like to shop around a little, first, but I was thinking Earth, classic Earth, 24th century, that would be perfect. I tell you what, we'll go there first, and try it out, and if you don't like it, then we'll look for somewhere else. So, see, now that's all settled, I had to tell you right away." He waited for it to sink in. He knew the relief and happiness it would bring her, it was going to blossom across her face, any moment now…

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Oh, gads. She was angry, again. "This you're always being angry with me, Rose, it's got to stop," he said, trying to keep a rather unmanly whine out of his voice. Probably not succeeding.

"Oh, you're impossible!" she growled, and thrashed her way out of the bed, then went to her armoire and started dressing angrily.

He was quite disappointed that when she ripped off her nightshirt, and her breasts were bouncing there in profile for a moment, her arms stretched overhead, that he couldn't go touch her. But that would be a very bad idea right now. Very bad idea. Rose was angry. Why was she angry?

In a pair of sweatpants and a fresh tee, attire which said "I'm not going anywhere just yet," Rose flipped on the lights and gestured to her bedroom door. "You, out. I'm going to the bathroom, and I will meet you in the galley in a few minutes. And then you can explain to me-" and here began a list.

She made a fist in the air, pointed toward where he was still half-on, half-off her bed, and thrust a forefinger up, counting. "One, how the hell you got into my head from a totally different part of the Tardis, last night. Two," she added her thumb. "Why you think teasing me is so hilarious. Three, why you have no respect for my need to sleep a solid nine hours a day. And, four and five," she opened up her hand fully, "why the fuck you decide we're gettin' married and movin' out of the Tardis and changing our whole lives up without fucking asking me!"

He sat still on the bed, drinking her in. Gods, she was glorious when she was like this. There were gold and champagne sparklers, like stars from a firework, popping off all round her in an aura of psychic energy. It was more beautiful, more stirring, than any mere celestial phenomenon he'd ever witnessed, his Rose, on fire.

"Are ya' deaf now as well as daft?" She pointed again to her bedroom door. "Out!"

He took heed, and scurried up. As he left, closing her door for her (she'd appreciate that, wouldn't she, wanting privacy and all), he could hear her going into her ensuite, slamming its door, muttering, "Bloody tosser, he's lost the plot, he has-"

He headed to the galley. He'd have tea ready, and he'd try to explain to her exactly why he'd "lost the plot," because she was right, he had. Perhaps he wasn't thinking straight. How could he, with their bond half-formed, her running hot and cold and him knowing the imminent danger that was stalking her? Really, how could she expect a man to be sane under such circumstances? Maybe she was being the rude one, now, eh?

As he set water to boil on the induction hob, and went fishing in the cooler for cream (Rose liked cream), his mind was unsettled, his emotions fractured. No, this couldn't go on, he couldn't focus. What good was he to her or the universe, if he couldn't focus? He fetched down a tin of Irish Breakfast from the cupboard (Rose loved Irish Breakfast), he sensed her moving through the Tardis, coming toward him, and his body surged with anticipation, veritable fountains of joy moving through him from stern to stem and back again, at just the thought she was going to walk into the room in a moment.

That's when he knew it, for certain: he was hopelessly down a rabbit hole, and only his Alice could get them out.


End file.
